Being a mom is a blessing and a great responsibility. You have lovely kids to take care of – and you will constantly worry about them especially when you are away from them. You have thousands of household chores waiting for you at home: the sink is full of dirty cutlery, the laundry basket is full, everyone’s wardrobe has to be arranged and you have to cook for the family. To top it all, you might have your own business to mind, or be employed. All this might drive you to your extreme if you have no planned routine to work it all out. Even when multi-tasking you have to have a proper laid out plan.
To survive all this work, you need to have a strategy. Some things you can do to ease your workload are:
Have a To – Do List
Having an organized list of all the activities you need to do will help you prioritize. What activities are the most important and should be carried out first? What activities are not all that important? What activities could wait until tomorrow? How much time do you need for each specific activity? How many people are in your home and how can they help you achieve it all? When should you have a break?
All the above are questions you need to consider when making an activity list to help you in effective multi-tasking.
Also, be flexible. Do not let the list fully control you, it should be flexible enough to accompany additional workload, additional helpers, emergency activities and tiredness issues.
Organize A Schedule
Have a set routine about how you will do all your work. It would be a plus to let everyone in the house aware of your chosen and established routine in order to avoid clashes and disturbances while you’re doing the chores. For example, everyone should be aware of what time you clean the house so they avoid being in the house at that specific time to allow you room to execute your plans.
Also, everyone should know when laundry is done, to avoid leftover laundry. If you have assigned anyone a task – such as assigning washing of utensils to your daughter let her know when, how and why she should do the activity.
Avoid Procrastination
Sometimes you will get too lazy and decide to carry forward the day’s work to the next day. Do you what you can do now. Avoid time wasting. If you carry forward your activities, your workload will only increase in time and with time, you will be overwhelmed by all you have to do. Then you will be in a big mess since time will be too little.
Multitask Simple and Easy Tasks
Multitask when you can. This greatly reduces your workload. Such as applying your makeup while feeding the kids; washing, drying and folding your laundry at the same time; cooking while washing utensils; listening to your favorite podcast while brushing teeth.
You can even make multitasking fun – such as playing with the kids while cleaning the house; or teaching the kids how to work in the garden while you are also working on it.
Self Discipline
You will have to force yourself do some chores you don’t like because you have to. Also, when you feel lazy, you will still have to work since your family depends on you. Do all chores to the best of your ability, to minimize any repetitions of a task.
Limit Distracters
Your children, spouses, guests or pets might distract you from your duties, making you late in performing them. Avoid watching television or using your phone when executing your duties. If you need space while working, make it clear to other house members. Limiting distracters is the best way to get everything done on time especialy when multi-tasking.
Work in Small Increments
Do not hurry too much to do everything at once. You will be swallowing a pie too large for your mouth, which is disastrous. Do the activities incrementally; few small things at a time, just the right pace and soon you will be amazed at the size of workload you can finish in a day.
Find Motivation
Doing the same chores every time every day will always feel like a monotony over the course of time. Even if you love your job, you will get bored soon. However, you can counter this by trying the following:
Look for the light – look forward to better days such as birthdays, night time when you will be asleep with your spouse, public holidays when you can rest, or even vacations.
Motivational quotes – the Internet has lots of motivational quotes services. You can utilize them to get daily motivation to push you through your day.
Get Moving – when you are very tired, the last thing you would want is to wake up and start working again. However, this is a proven to revive your motivation. Start working and your heartbeat will spur more energy into you, reviving you.
Get Support – inform your mate of how exhausted you are and often, they will chip in to help you cut down the workload.
Tick the List – once an activity is completed tick it on your list as done. This motivates you as one task has already been down so that is one less task to perform for the day.
Set Clear Boundaries
Be clear on when you should rest and how much work you are supposed to do in a given day. When you feel like you are overworking yourself, take an immediate rest and reflect. You can also find out how multi-tasking simple chores can make your days less hectic.
Make Time For You
As much as you are working for the whole family, make some time for yourself. You have a life and you need to take care of yourself.
Take a bath, have a rest, take a walk or watch a movie, since you deserve the best. This will also help you keep your moods in check, as being overworked will leave you dull, unable to cope with your family.
As a mom, your responsibilities will need a lot of planning and multi-tasking. All decisions you make will affect your whole family. If you try the above measures, you can be well assured of a fun-filled adventure in life with your family.
